Russia prides itself on its digital advances — from an extensive e-commerce services sector to ambitious plans for developing artificial intelligence. But now, some of the key data centers at the heart of its technical prowess have been knocked out by Ukrainian drone attacks during the 4 1/2-year-old full-scale invasion, suffering damage that could take a long time to repair. Ukraine this month hit three main data centers belonging to tech giant Yandex, one for Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, and one for social media platform VKontakte, the country’s equivalent to Facebook. Widespread interruptions to cloud services have been reported. Banking, e-commerce, geolocation and ride-hailing services all have suffered lasting disruptions.
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Meta Platforms says its third-quarter profit jumped more than threefold, as revenue climbed sharply. The Facebook and Instagram parent company on Wednesday reported net income of $9.86 billion, or $3.83 per share, for the July-September period. Excluding a charge from a historic legal settlement, profit was $7.40 per share. Revenue grew 26% to $64.60 billion and beat Wall Street's estimates. CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted during a call with analysts that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up accounts for Muse, the personal artificial intelligence agent the company launched in August.
Federal prosecutors say a former OpenAI engineer secretly installed a recording device in a conference room to gather company details. The Saudi national was reportedly close to fleeing to Saudi Arabia. Abdulrahman Alfozan's wife and son left the U.S. after his arrest, with tickets paid for by a Saudi military official. Prosecutors argue Alfozan has resources and foreign support, noting Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with the U.S. Alfozan's lawyers claim the trip was planned for paternity leave and that he was pursuing U.S. citizenship. A judge will decide on his detention.
Downloads of new artificial intelligence agents — like Meta's Muse and OpenAI's dots — are booming. Many have quickly welcomed AI agents into much of their online lives, and raved about the ways they can take care of everyday tasks with ease from snagging a dinner reservation or planning a trip to organizing inboxes full of emails and texts. But users have also been caught off guard when the technology goes beyond the bounds of what they thought they permitted it to do. Regardless, AI is powered by the information it has access to. Questions of privacy are top of mind.
U.S. consumers are uneasy about the increasingly high-tech ways that restaurant chains and major retailers are setting prices. Digital price tags are replacing paper ones in grocery aisles. Artificial intelligence tools help businesses decide what to charge by predicting how customers might respond. Terms like “dynamic pricing” and “surveillance pricing” are stirring up anger and anxiety on social media. Much of the concern focuses on whether customer data is getting used to give different people different prices for the same product. Walmart and McDonald's say critics misunderstand how their pricing tools work. Lawmakers and regulators are taking preemptive action to restrict when companies can use personal data in pricing.
North Korea says it has tested a new torpedo system that uses artificial intelligence for target detection and guidance. North Korean state media said Friday the weapon was a “super-speed precisely guided” torpedo system named “Zam-2.0.” It didn't explain what was meant by artificial intelligence. South Korea’s military, which often accuses the North of exaggerating its military technologies, did not immediately comment on KCNA’s report. North Korea has been ramping up weapons demonstrations in recent weeks, including conducting its first underwater-launched missile tests in nearly three years, as leader Kim Jong Un shifts his focus to naval capabilities after years of ballistic missile development.
Tech giant Meta has denied accusations it has acted with political bias during Brazil’s presidential campaign. The denial comes less than a day after the country’s electoral court ruled it must give equal treatment to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of their Oct. 25 runoff. The case was triggered by Lula’s campaign, which claimed the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp was using biased algorithms and AI restrictions to favor Bolsonaro. The suit in Brazil echoes related cases in Romania and Germany in which the state had to impose itself to fix imbalances found at Meta.
The head of the International Monetary Fund has called for urgent guardrails to manage risks from the AI boom, comparing it to a Formula 1 car that could go off track. Speaking on a panel, Kristalina Georgieva emphasized the importance of regulation to prevent potential harm. Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, echoed these concerns, noting that toys are more regulated than AI. He stressed the need for policy frameworks to control AI development. An IMF study found AI could transform or create 10% of jobs, but repetitive tasks may disappear. Georgieva highlighted the need for access to electricity and digital networks to maximize AI's benefits.
Eight states are suing the artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, saying the company’s popular chatbot violated consumer protection laws by hurting children and deceiving adults. In its lawsuit filed Wednesday, Iowa says the company’s chatbot model, ChatGPT, is giving dangerous medical advice, encouraging paranoia and coaching people to hurt others or commit suicide. OpenAI says it has built in safety protections into ChatGPT for children, and that it would continue to do so. The lawsuits are the latest to be filed by states accusing tech giants that offer AI chatbots and social media platforms of harming children. The other states suing are Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia.
Attorney General Kathy Jennings has joined a coalition of state attorneys general seeking stronger protections for children and consumers as Character Technologies Inc. goes through bankruptcy proceedings.